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Quentin squints against the harsh light of the fridge. It’s the third time he’s poked through it since midnight and it only takes a cursory glance to confirm that, no, nothing edible has appeared since the last time he looked. At least nothing that would be edible without his first expending some effort to make it so, which is, to put it mildly, unlikely.
Honestly, what is the point of magic anyway? If Quentin ran this place, he thinks, if he were in charge, the fridge would always be magically stocked with gross greasy fast food leftovers at exactly the point in a depression spiral where you really needed them. What he wouldn’t give for some day old, frigid chicken nuggets.
What he wouldn’t give, incidentally, is enough of a fuck to actually go and procure some. Instead he squints into the fridge for a minute longer, sifting once more through the contents like some nocturnal scavenging creature half-blinded by sunrise, grabs a bag with two-and-a-half store brand string cheese sticks left in it, and drags himself into the living room to collapse on the couch.
He starts with the half-eaten one. Someone who clearly doesn’t understand how food works has peeled the plastic packaging partway off, bitten directly into the stick, and then left it open in the fridge to get all hardened around the edges. Gross. Not that he’s really in any place to judge. The cheese sits thick and mealy-gluey on his tongue and he swallows before it’s really chewed because he doesn’t want to taste it for any longer than he has to. He gags a little as it goes down.
Naturally that’s the exact moment Eliot walks in.
“Hey Q,” he lilts breezily as he hip checks the front door shut behind him. “Late night? Me too.” He’s got one foot on the stairs when he does a double take. “What the hell are you doing.”
“Um,” he says through another mouthful of mozzarella. “Dinner for one?”
Eliot’s expression goes through at least eight stages of grief. Quentin didn’t think there were that many. “Are you really sitting here eating—” Eliot strides toward him and snatches the bag from his lap, holding it up between two pinched fingers. “—three consecutive string cheese sticks at one in the goddamn morning?”
Quentin swallows. “It’s not one yet,” he mumbles, reduced to pointless contrarianism in the absence of any way to actually defend himself. “And technically it’s two-and-a-half. Someone ate half of this one already.”
Eliot closes his eyes and draws in a long breath through his nose. “Quentin Coldwater,” he says, enunciating every syllable deliberately. “Are you trying to make me cry?”
“Um. No?”
“Ah, so it comes naturally to you, then.” Eliot grabs him by his free hand and hauls him up off the couch. “Come with me. And leave that… affront to taste you’re punishing yourself with.”
“Leave-? Hey!” Quentin yelps as Eliot slaps impatiently at his hand until he drops the cheese stick on the floor. “Wh- I can’t just leave that there,” he protests as he is dragged toward the kitchen. “Other people live here, you know-”
“I don’t know that, actually. I’m pretty sure it’s just you, me, and Bambi. Sit down.”
Quentin obeys, hopping up onto a counter and kicking his feet aimlessly while Eliot busies himself rummaging through Quentin’s mortal enemy, the fridge. Sometimes it’s just easier not to argue, he figures.
Which is why he doesn’t protest when Eliot starts producing a wild assortment of things from the fridge, and then from drawers and cabinets and cupboards, knives and cutting boards and greens and spices and a container full of little yellowish spheres. He doesn’t protest when Eliot starts doing something inexplicable with lamb chops and lemons and olive oil and some assorted herbs he doesn’t recognize (the spiky stuff is rosemary, maybe?). Because it’s easier not to argue. Not, like, because his mouth is already watering at the prospect of his first actual, real-live hot meal in days. He isn’t that pathetic. Or, if he is, he’s not going to admit it so easily.
“What are you making?” he asks, a little intimidated, when Eliot starts mincing whole cloves of garlic.
“Oh, something simple,” Eliot answers, clearly not understanding Quentin’s personal definition of simple, which definitely doesn’t include things like garlic presses or tiny spheres, yellowish or otherwise. “Pearl couscous with spinach and baby portobello mushrooms, and lamb chops with a quick marinade. Very quick, since you’re making me do this in the middle of the damn night.”
“I’m not making you,” Quentin starts to say, but he shuts up when Eliot glares at him, brow arching, and goes back to watching his hands tighten and relax on the garlic press. Not arguing, right. Eliot’s knuckles turn pale and then pink, pale and then pink. It’s kind of hypnotic. He could probably fall asleep to it. He’s almost disappointed when Eliot stops mincing and scoops the garlic into a pot to simmer with some onions in olive oil. Until the smell hits him, and he feels like passing out. “Oh,” he says. Eliot smirks and starts slicing mushrooms.
Quentin blinks about eighty times in a row, head swimming as he realizes Huh, apparently I’m fucking starving. He hugs his knees up to his chest and watches the little silver knife sink through each mushroom, Eliot’s thumb pressed tight to the handle, holding it sure and steady against his curled forefinger. Chop. Chop. Chop. Maybe if he’s lucky the sound of it will cover the noises his stomach is suddenly making. Probably not, though, judging by the amusement in Eliot’s eyes when he looks up, scooping the mushrooms into the pot.
“Smells good?” he asks innocently. Or trying for innocently, anyway. Eliot can play act all he likes but his eyes always give him away, and they’re gleaming in the warm peachy light of the overhead fixture.
Quentin pulls the sleeves of his sweatshirt over his hands and tries to blow a stray lock of hair off his face. “Just keep going,” he says.
Eliot smiles and brushes the hair behind Quentin’s ear with his pinky finger. “If I only had a nickel for every time a pretty boy told me that,” he murmurs, his voice a little teasing, a little fond, low-pitched in his ear.
Quentin hides his face and tries not to have some kind of cardiac episode as Eliot laughs, sweet and careless, and traces a meandering line down Quentin’s flushing neck with one finger. “You’re all pink,” he says, wickedly delighted. “How precious.”
“You should be locked up,” Quentin mumbles into his knees, and refuses to look up again until Eliot is safely on the other side of the kitchen, pouring the little spheres — pearl couscous, he remembers — into another pot. Even as he faces the stove, Quentin can see the pronounced curve of his cheek that means he’s grinning. Criminal.
The lamb chops are next, dropped onto the heated skillet to sizzle and sear and oh, oh god, Quentin is dying. He is going to drop dead right here on the kitchen counter between Eliot’s sly flirtations and the smell of his cooking, before he ever actually gets to taste any of it. He vaguely hopes Eliot will be kind enough not to tell anyone how he died. Will come up with some fabrication about a terrible accident, maybe. Died of being just, like, way too eager in general, his autopsy will read.
He’ll tell Margo the truth, of course, and she’ll lend El her lipstick so they can leave matching crimson kiss prints on his headstone. “Poor Q,” they’ll lament, absurdly beautiful in all black, “all that anticipation just shocked his little system,” and then Eliot will wipe the smear of scarlet from his lovely mocking mouth and-
Quentin may be catastrophizing a little. He may, also, be remembering very abruptly what it is like to actually want things. He really hates that part of emerging from his depression cocoon.
Across the kitchen, Eliot is washing his hands. He turns off the faucet and flicks stray droplets into the basin with an air of finality. “Alright. The lamb is resting and the couscous is simmering. Everything will be done in ten minutes.” He saunters over to stand before Quentin in that personal-space-what-personal-space manner he has, folding his arms on top of Quentin’s knees, chest brushing against his shins. “Want a taste before it’s ready?”
Quentin swallows and nods.
“Mm. Too bad.” Then he grins and shoves his still-wet hands down the collar of Quentin’s t-shirt.
Dangerous criminal, Quentin thinks, trying to compose himself as Eliot laughs his evil, pert little ass off at Quentin’s involuntary squeak and the way he’s nearly fallen off the counter. Quentin scowls murderously and tries very hard to actually mean it.
“Aw, I’m sorry, Q,” drawls the terrible evil alluring criminal, offering a hand to pull him back upright. “I just couldn’t resist. You always give such a reaction.” He looks the absolute antithesis of sorry, eyes bright, hand curled around Quentin’s, hips pressed against the counter between his knees.
“React to my dick,” Quentin grumbles, feeling harried and brainless.
“Cutting. But unfortunately I think the food would get cold,” Eliot responds, releasing his hand and drawing back to check on one of the pots. “Go set the table for two,” he says, waving absently toward the dining room.
And, it’s just. Easier not to argue. So Quentin does, once his lungs start behaving sensibly again.
He places the settings at opposite ends of the table, hoping to actually survive the night, but when Eliot comes through the doorway in a whirlwind of levitating pots and pans and trivets he just rolls his eyes, flicks his hand a few times to set everything down, then flicks it again to slide Quentin’s plate over to the seat beside his.
“It’s two in the morning, Q. Don’t make me stare at you across the length of the table like we’re uncomfortably divorced former spouses trying to be civil for just one dinner, for the children’s sake.”
“Well, if you’re really not concerned about the children,” Quentin mutters, half-delirious with hunger, and maybe also the fact that hey, yeah, it is two in the morning, and sits at the corner of the table.
Eliot fills their plates. It’s more food than Quentin would’ve taken for himself, which is maybe the point. “Darling, with our genes? There’s no point being concerned.” His tone is airy, grand, and distantly melancholy, his mouth drawn up at one corner. “They’ll turn out beautiful and fucked up regardless.”
“Huh,” says Quentin, blinking slowly. “I think I’ve lost track of this bit.”
“That’s alright, dear. Just eat.”
And there’s no sense arguing with that, especially when Quentin’s stomach is making embarrassing noises again. So he doesn’t.
“Oh my god,” he moans through a bite of the couscous, and Eliot’s mouth turns up at both corners this time, eyes warm, and he doesn’t even scold him for talking with his mouth full. The weird little spheres are soft like pasta and rich like broth, sitting warm and pleasantly smooth on his tongue. The mushrooms and spinach break up the texture just enough to be interesting, and the onions seem almost to melt in his mouth. “Oh my god, I know that you literally are magical but, like, are you magical?”
Eliot perches his chin in one long-fingered hand, looking unbearably pleased. “So it’s better than a half-eaten string cheese?”
“It’s better than anything else on this planet,” Quentin says, shoveling more food into his mouth and not caring about how uncouth he probably seems or the fact that he is playing way too fast and loose with feeding El’s ego.
Exhibit A: the cat-eating-the-canary grin on Eliot’s face when he purrs out “Oh, Q, don’t get ahead of yourself, now,” giving Quentin the distinct impression that he is the canary in question.
Whatever. He doesn’t have time to worry about that. He’s too busy remembering that Holy shit, food tastes good. The lamb chops are amazing too, savory and sharp and juicy enough that he has to wipe his chin after he bites into one, too impatient to use his fork and knife.
Eliot eats slowly, watching him the whole time, dropping the smug performance once it becomes clear that Quentin is engrossed in eating. He can still see Eliot, though, is still aware of him in the way he is always, almost uncomfortably, aware of him, and he notices when Eliot frowns, concern plain on his features before he swiftly reshapes them.
Right. Eliot found him sitting on the couch forcing down stale string cheese at one in the morning, wearing the same clothes from yesterday. Or two days ago, now. He’d actually managed to forget that particular indignity.
“Umm,” he says, because he’s Quentin Coldwater and that’s his fucking catchphrase, he guesses. “Hey, El, thanks for. You know. For doing all this. You didn’t have to.”
Eliot’s eyes go warm and liquid for a moment and then he inhales, drapes himself languorously over his chair, molds himself into the picture of insouciance. “Please,” he says, carelessly, “as if I could allow anyone to eat processed cheese under my roof. Whoever brought that into the cottage will be summarily removed, I assure you.”
“Oh, of course,” agrees Quentin, smiling probably far too indulgently to salvage any amount of pride from this. It’s fine. It’s after two in the morning. No one can be blamed for being sappy after two in the morning. “I’m just lucky you got here in time to rescue me.”
Eliot’s lashes flutter as he sighs. “Q, you know,” he says haltingly. “I can… there are some recipes I’ve been meaning to try. I could use a taste tester.”
Quentin, who eats Captain Crunch cereal straight out of the box and knows Eliot better than to think he’d trust his palate on anything, doesn’t argue. “I’m always happy to help,” he says instead.
“Good.” Eliot clears his throat. “Then you can help me clean all this up. And then go take a shower; your hair is looking limp.”
They leave the dishes in the sink for tomorrow and Eliot escorts him up the stairs to the bathroom with one warm hand sprawled across the small of his back. He stalls a little, climbing slower than he really needs to, just to feel it press against his spine, steadying him. Apparently he lays it on a little thick because Eliot stops him at the door, taking hold of his wrist and peering down at him with a furrowed brow.
“Are you sure you’re alright?” he asks, sweeping Quentin’s hair out of his face. “You’re not going to pass out in the shower or anything? I can’t have any medical emergencies on my watch.”
Quentin closes his eyes and unthinkingly turns his cheek into Eliot’s broad palm. “I’m good,” he says. “I promise.”
When he remembers himself and opens his eyes Eliot looks- he looks a lot of things, actually, some of them not immediately identifiable. Then his throat bobs, and he blinks twice, and his face clears. “Well, as long as you promise,” he intones lightly. His thumb is stroking back and forth, back and forth on Quentin’s cheekbone.
God. Quentin has to get in the shower before he actually does pass out, falling asleep in the palm of Eliot’s hand like a kitten in an internet video. “I’m good,” he repeats, opening the door to the bathroom.
“I’m sure you are,” says Eliot, withdrawing his touch with something almost like reluctance. He stands there silently as Quentin steps into the bathroom and closes the door behind him.
Quentin presses his forehead to the wood and tries not to dwell on the fact that Eliot sounded a lot like he wanted to say something else entirely.
He doesn’t need to be any more of a burden than he already is on one of the only friends he has here.
So if he spends a little too long in the shower, the water a little too hot on his skin, thinking a little too hard about Eliot’s wet fingers skating over his collarbone and the way his moss-and-whiskey eyes can’t keep a secret, well. It’s nearly three in the morning. Who could blame him, really?
He’s maybe fifteen minutes in when he finally hears slow, even footsteps retreating down the hall.
Quentin squeezes his eyes shut and leans back against the tile, feeling raw beneath the hot spray.